The World Is Still Watching

After The 1968 Democratic Convention, Nothing In Chicago Was Quite The Same Again

Law Enforcers

July 24, 1988|By Article by Jeff Lyon, a Sunday staff writer.

``The convention was the climactic event of the 1960s, though a great many other very important events and demonstrations and repressions occurred after it. Why should the convention have been the event that captured the imagination? In part, it was because a national party that for all practical purposes had been the ruling party of the country for 36 years, the party of Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy, was being seen by significant groups of people as being wrongly and destructively in support of a war. Then you had the presence of the media from beginning to end. They were here by the thousands, on hand in some way everywhere. The media at the beginning of the convention tended to be not just ideologically but physically on the side of the demonstrators, present among them. So for about 2 1/2 days, the media were reporting this thing through the eyes of the protesters, seeing things they weren`t supposed to see, being clubbed and beaten themselves, watching photographers having their cameras smashed.

``I felt a lot of sympathy for the cops in the street. I don`t think it was a police riot. To say that is to insult their intelligence. If you asked any cop what they were doing, they told you in the strongest voice, `I got my orders, buddy.` I heard that a hundred times. I think Daley wanted to take a very strong stance, to show that Chicago was a city that works, where order is kept, and the orders were passed along orally. Now, that`s not to say there weren`t offenses by police. Like in combat, things get chaotic. Individual initiative gets carried out. And even when they were following orders, they would still be culpable for using unreasonable force, which is why they took their nameplates off.

``My own experience in those five days, though, was that whenever the police disengaged, the problem went away. Now, true, there were plenty of demonstrators out there seeking confrontation and provocation with the police. But if the police did not engage, the confrontation did not occur. If the cops had just gone away when they were being pelted with bottles, it would have stopped, and generally the pelting only began after the police attack began.

``We do know from later testimony that they had pretty strict orders that they were not to use guns except under extreme danger to their own lives. The fact that no one was killed that week was almost miraculous. You simply didn`t understand how the cops didn`t shoot, given their absolute fury. So the parameters were laid down. They could club, beat, harass, Mace, use every form of attack except guns to kill.``

Mabley: ``The biggest thing that happened that week was extremely bad police work. There was good and bad, of course. But from Day 1, it was incredibly stupid. I don`t think they were under orders to act that way. It was overreaction. They fell into a trap deliberately set, where they failed to distinguish between demonstrators and onlookers, charging anything that moved. And the place where it was worst wasn`t where the TV cameras were, over by the Hilton on Wednesday night, but several blocks away on State Street, where the police just went crazy. They were sweeping both sides of the street, and one fellow had a severe handicap; he had a crutch and had a hard time moving. Several policeman took out after him and beat him with clubs while he was trying to hop and cover his head. Then three or four cops cornered a man in an entryway who looked like a Catholic priest and beat him senseless. Some cops had it in for clergymen because they were peacemakers, trying to act as intermediaries. It was difficult for a reporter. Every instinct in you says protest, but if you did, you knew those clubs would come down on you. Some of the reporters were getting involved and were protesting, especially the Daily News reporters, but I was in charge of the American`s street coverage, and I gave strict orders not to become involved no matter how provoked. You observe and report.